It is a problem in the field of wireless communications to manage the wireless services provided by an aircraft network to passengers (also termed “subscribers” herein) who are located in the aircraft as they roam among cell sites in the non-terrestrial cellular communication network. The aircraft network serves a plurality of subscribers, yet has a link to the ground-based network via a wide bandwidth connection that concurrently serves multiple individual subscribers. The management of this wide bandwidth connection to enable the individual identification of aircraft-based subscribers has yet to be addressed in existing wireless networks.
In the field of terrestrial cellular communications, it is common for a wireless subscriber to move throughout the area served by the network of their home cellular service provider and maintain their desired subscriber feature set. Feature set availability throughout the home network is managed by the home cellular service provider's database, often termed a Home Location Register (HLR), with data connections to one or more switches (packet or circuit), and various ancillary equipment, such as voice mail and short message servers, to enable this seamless feature set management. Each subscriber is associated with a one-to-one communication connection, which comprises a channel on the serving cell site, to access the desired communication services.
Emergency Services access is an important feature of existing telecommunications networks, with the network being capable of not only identifying the subscriber but also their present location to facilitate dispatching emergency services personnel. A universal code, such as 911 in North America and 112 in Europe, is used to access emergency dispatch personnel at predefined sites termed “Public Safety Access Points (PSAPs)”. Enhanced 911 (E911) is an extension of this basic service and is defined by the transmission of callback number and geographical location information to the emergency dispatch personnel. The term “geographical location information” is used to refer to information about the physical position of a subscriber in the physical environment as opposed to a communications network address. For example, it comprises a civic address, postal address, street address, latitude and longitude information, or geodetic location information. E911 may be implemented for landline and/or wireless devices. Voice-Over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a technology that emulates a phone call, but instead of using a circuit based system such as the telephone network, it utilizes packetized data transmission techniques most notably implemented in the Internet. Thus, in the existing telecommunications networks, there are a number of instances where the geographical location of the subscriber cannot be identified.
In order to promptly dispatch emergency service vehicles or other assistance to the correct destination, accurate information about the geographical location of the subscriber is needed. In conventional wire-line switched telephone networks, it is possible to provide the subscriber location information relatively easily because telephone handsets are fixed in particular locations. Static database entries can then be made in a database which is accessible to the emergency services personnel at the Public Safety Access Points (PSAPs) to associate a subscriber's home address and telephone number. However, for mobile communication systems, the use of such static database entries is not possible because the geographical location of a wireless communications device varies over time.
Another problem concerns routing emergency calls to the correct destination. For regular calls, this is not such an issue because the subscriber enters specific details of the required call destination. However, for emergency calls, the jurisdiction for emergency services answering points typically is quite small, for example, at the county level in the USA. This information about the geographical location of the subscriber is needed to determine the routing of the call to the proper Public Safety Access Point (PSAP). Misrouting of calls to the wrong answering point leads to costs in transferring calls, impacts reliability, and leads to delays in dispatching emergency services personnel which are significant in life-threatening situations.
When wireless subscribers enter the non-terrestrial cellular communication network (that is, they fly in an aircraft as passengers), they encounter a unique environment that traditionally has been disconnected from the terrestrial cellular network, where the wireless network of the aircraft interfaces the subscriber (also termed “passenger” herein) to various services and content. The aircraft wireless network, therefore, can function as a content filter or can create unique types of content that are directed to the individual passengers who are onboard the aircraft. However, although the aircraft network serves a plurality of passengers, it has a link to the ground-based Access Network via a wide bandwidth radio frequency connection that has a single IP address on the ground-based Access Network. The wide bandwidth radio frequency connection concurrently carries the communications of multiple individual passengers, but these communications cannot be individually identified by the ground-based Access Network. The management of this wide bandwidth connection to enable the individual identification of passengers via the assignment of individual unique IP addresses to each passenger wireless device has yet to be addressed in existing wireless networks.
Furthermore, the processing of an emergency services call where the subscriber is located in an aircraft raises issues heretofore never addressed, especially since the location of the subscriber continually changes as the aircraft continues on its flight. The aircraft flight crew and cabin crew are the only personnel on site that can be relied upon to provide some sort of emergency services response, and they must be intimately involved in an emergency services call. In addition, emergency services personnel cannot be dispatched to the aircraft, but the aircraft can be dispatched to an alternate destination given the proper authorization to enable the emergency to be resolved at that alternate location. However, the process to effectuate such a decision and the communications architecture to support this process are presently not developed.